I didn't want to look at whatever he was holding. It was small and it seemed to be moving.
"It's his soul," Donny said. "As long as I got it he ain't going anywhere."
Having woken up in my share of ugly married women's beds I knew damn well what shock could do to a man, so I phrased my next words carefully.
"You did good Donny," I told him.
"I ain't letting go," he said, pushing the piece of bear at my face.
I made a few fresh-caught trout mouths of my own, and then he smiled that Donny smile of his again and I figured everything was going to be okay, sooner or later.
"I'm holding it tight," Donny said. "There's got to be some kind of sacrifice."
He wasn't making much sense, but how much sense could I expect after what we'd been through. I decided that he'd be okay, although I wasn't all that sure about myself.
"We got to eat it," Donny said.
"Hunh?"
"We got to eat the bear," Donny said. "You can't kill something wild for no reason. It's a sin."
I was about to point out that self-preservation counts high among my reasons for bear slaughter, when Irvin spoke up.
"He's right," Irvin said. "We got to eat some of it."
He knelt down with his hunting knife in his hands, already hacking into the hide and cutting loose a chunk of meat. "We don't have to eat it all. Just a bit will do."
"Irvin, are you completely fucked in the head, or just generally soft?"
Irvin stared at me, his eyes as hard and deep as the twin barrels of a shotgun.
"We got to eat some of the meat," he repeated. "And then we got to apologise for killing it. Billy Three-Legs Tootoosis is a hell of a lot smarter than he looks."
He threw me his Zippo.
"Start a fire," he said. "But careful, mind you, we don't want to be setting the whole damned place ablaze."
* 4 *
Well I wouldn't exactly call it hot cuisine. The fact was it wasn't even close to tepid. We didn't have enough time to build a bed of coals, so we settled for charring it over the open flames. We held it off to one side so that the bear fat wouldn't flare up in the flames, turning it rotisserie style to keep the juices from running off of it and drying it out. I'm certain we picked up enough pestilence and corruption to single-handedly bring about the rebirth of the Bubonic Plague, but we got her down and said our apologies and made things right with the Great Spirit or whoever the hell was watching from up there above the pines.
"Well that hit the spot," Irvin said.
"Would that be the spot of indigestion or that spot of pneumatic botulism that is germinating somewhere southwest of my lower intestine?" I asked.
"Quit your belly aching," Irvin chided me. "Let's get this asshole under way."
He pointed at Tyree.
Only I got to wondering about Tyree. The fact was, I'd be wondering all of the way through the bear meat. What Tyree had done hadn't been all that much compared to arm-fucking a full grown black bear, but who was to say that bear hadn't been held back just enough on account of Tyree hanging on so tightly to Fozzie's funky fuzzy teabags. Who was to say that Tyree hadn't just saved my life, as much as Irvin kept telling me it was Donny who'd done the deed?
"Get that thought out of your head right now," Irvin warned me like he could read my mind. "He didn't save you. Donny did."
I stared at Irvin. He always had a touch of magic and secrecy about him, what with his making guns appear and seeing in the dark and knowing the proper apologies to make to a dead bear. All the same, I had to argue with him this time.
"Are you sure about that?" I asked.
"I said it, didn't I?"
Irvin wasn't known for much exaggeration. The man had all of the imagination of petrified dog turd.
"So what's your verdict, your honour?" I asked, pointing down at Tyree. "What the hell do you figure we ought to do with him for now?"
Irvin looked over at me as if I'd just said the stupidest thing since tri-party politics.
"What the fuck else do you figure we're going to do?" Irvin said. "The same thing we came out here to do in the first place."
Irvin hawked up a jumbo-sized loogie and let it gravitationally anoint itself down onto the top of Tyree's head. It hit home with a soft wet plop that sounded like it would stay stuck for a hell of a long time.
"We're going to kill the little fucker, that's what we're going to do."
* 5 *
We darkened the lights on the truck and left it where it was, hoping that the engine would start when we got back. We'd borrowed the truck from the freight yard, and would have to get it back by morning, but if we had to leave it here we'd probably be safe enough. These trucks went missing all the time, and like it as not they'd just blame it on Tyree and call it a day.
"What the hell kind of name is Tyree, anyway?" Irvin asked.
"How the fuck should I know?" I asked. "Maybe he made it up."
"Who in the hell would make up their own name?"
I was thinking about my own name, and how I planned to change it.
"A lot of people change their names," I said. "Folks are re-inventing themselves all of the time."
"Don't fix nothing if it isn't broke," Irvin said. "What do you think, Donny?"
"I wonder if there are any more bears out here." Donny wondered aloud.
It was a good question, given all that had happened.
"If there is any more out there Donny, you can syrup them up with your sweet talking before up and fist-fucking them to death," Irvin said.
I glowered at Irvin's back. The man had all the sensitivity of a sandblast enema.
"There ain't nothing out here but trees and rocks and the dark, and a whole lot of fucking mosquitoes," I said, trying to cheer Donny up.
"What's over them hills, do you figure?" He asked.
"More hills," Irvin said. "Let's get moving."
We followed the railroad tracks, straight on out into the darkness of the night. I did my best to stay downwind of Donny. The bear stink on him was beginning to fulminate. We both were stinking of bear, shit, fear and genuine funk. I heard there were folks in Korea who would pay an awful lot for a bear's gall bladder. I figured between what Donny was wearing on his arm and the halo of minced bear head cheese I was wearing on my forehead we ought to have both been worth a small fortune on E-bay.
We kept on walking, one step after another.
About that time the bear brains started talking to me, good and loud.
* 6 *
Now talking is a good thing. It's how we fill in the gaps between what needs doing, what wants doing, and whatever the hell we're dreaming about doing when we stare up at the ceiling before falling into sleep. Talk is a kind of glue that holds lives together. It's not the work that you do that makes the engineer such a good buddy to the guy working in the caboose. It's the stories that you tell over a beer or a coffee or a campfire that makes a man's memories loom out loud and long.
So maybe that's what this bear was doing, trying to talk to me. Maybe he was trying to get to know what it was like to have thumbs and worry about something else besides making a few more cubs and fattening that belly that needed filling by winter. Maybe he was just trying to understand the simple asshole that had left the tip of his thumb buried in the humorous jelly of his left eye socket, just an inch or two shy of his Jasper-Jellystone dreaming frontal lobe.
Or maybe he was just fucking around in whatever roomy dark cave of an afterlife Northern Ontario black bears inhabit after they been Lugered to death.
"The path is long," The spirit of the bear said to me. "And it touches all sides."
"No kidding," I said. "You ought to try walking it while you're dragging a duct taped arsonist in tow."
"Whiner," The dead bear said.
"Winnie," I retorted.
Repartee is my middle name. You get a lot of practise up here in Northern Ontario, in between the crib and the curling and listening to the diesels hoot down the line. Life up h
ere has its own kind of rhythm, hard and driving like a train engine, and then there's them long stretches of quiet in between, and it hardly surprises a fellow when he can find himself the time to converse with the dead spirit of a black bear.
"Should I apologise again?" I asked. "I know the Cree are big about apologising to the animals they catch and kill. It wasn't really me that killed you. You know that, don't you? I'm just the guy who fondled your left eye socket up close and personal. In some cultures that's often considered a kind of pre-emptive mating strike."
"That's okay," The spirit of the bear said. "Shit happens, every day. It all gets washed away in the flush of life."
"Hakuna Matata," I agreed. "What goes around comes around."
"The past is nothing more than a canvas for what's going on right now," The bear expounded. The spirit of the bear was making a surprising amount of sense, given that he was dead and all. Maybe that gave him a little sense of perspective.
"Dead men walk the tracks," The dead bear said.
I looked over at the rails, and all at once I could see the spirits of the dead men walking, the navvies and the chinks and the road gangs who'd laid down the steel and the timber like a stitch sewn out across a giant forever carcass.
"But they tell no tales," I answered.
"They tell no tales but they sure as hell leave trails," The dead bear said.
"You're bound and determined to get the last word in, ain't you?" I said.
In the chat-room of my inner child imagination I stared into the dead bear's eyes. They seemed like black holes, sucking me downward. I could see something swimming up towards me in the dark sea of the dead bear's eyes. It looked a little like Irvin.
"Earth to Hanny, Earth to Hanny, Houston we have got a fucking problem."
"Huh?" I looked around. The bear was gone. Irvin was staring at me like I was a bug under a microscope. Only something was changed. Irvin was wearing a robe of bear fur and black feathers that looked like it might have been growing out of his skin.
"You were sleepwalking," He said. "And talking to yourself."
"Daydreaming, I guess," I said.
"Not dreaming," Irvin corrected. "You've been walking wide. That's a danger in the dark places of the North woods. There are shadows out here cast by no tree or rock. Dark places where you can step through into another plane of existence."
I looked up at Irvin, and I could see it wasn't really Irvin.
"I must still be dreaming," I said. "You're Irvin, only not Irvin."
"Not dreaming. You've been walking wide. There's a big difference," Irvin-not-Irvin said. "The world used to be a dark colorless plain of nothingness. There weren't any people or plants or animals. There weren't any mountains, lakes or forests. There was nothing but nothingness. Then the spirit awoke from the shadows and stood up and began rooting around in the darkness looking for food or drink. He turned up mountains, and pissed down rivers, and the dreams he planted grew up into people and animals and birds and life. Then they all started moving around in the darkness, stirring up the wind and calling down the rain and drawing out the moon, and the fire that burned in their collective hearts grew out to become the sun."
"I have no fucking idea what you are talking about," I said to Irvin-not-Irvin.
Irvin-not-Irvin smiled. His smile looked a little like Donny's, crooked at one side like his happiness was leaking out.
"Sure you do," Irvin-not-Irvin said. "We all know it when we go dreaming, when we go walking wide. We're all part of this world and when we touch it there are ripples that sing out and touch everything else. Man, woman, moose and bear. We're all a part of this big wide walking, reaching out in every direction, touching everywhere and everything all at once."
Then Irvin-not-Irvin winked, and in his wink I saw the great one-eyed bear, with my own thumbprint still burning somewhere deep inside that black hole eye socket.
Irvin-not-Irvin smiled one more time, that half-cracked Donny smile of his that he'd borrowed or maybe owned in the first place.
"Wake up," Irvin-not-Irvin said, and I did.
* 7 *
"Shit," I said, starting my eyes open.
"Wake up," Irvin said. "You're asleep at the switch and we got work to do."
"Shit, shit," I repeated.
"You're covered in it. So is Donny. That happens sometimes. We still got work to do. Stop talking to yourself and let's get to it."
I hadn't been talking to myself, and I knew that for a fact, but I wasn't about to argue the point with Irvin.
"Sorry," I said, because it seemed simpler than trying to explain what I'd just been through. Simpler, on account of I wasn't all that sure myself what I'd just been through.
"I'm awake now Irvin," I assured him.
He grunted, like he wasn't all that certain if I was or not.
"You've been talking to the bear, haven't you?" Irvin asked.
I looked back at Irvin, double checking to make sure I wasn't still dreaming.
"How the fuck did you know?" I asked him.
"Who else is out here to talk to?" Irvin said, like it made all of the sense in the world. "Now come on. It's been a long night, but we've still got a long way to go."
It turned out to be a whole lot longer than the three of us could have ever guessed.
* 8 *
We were about five miles out from town and my feet were channeling the bunions of the collective casualties of the Trail of Tears and the Bataan Death March. We were far enough down the line that it wasn't likely there'd be any switchman humping boxcars down this way and accidentally disturbing us before we were finished.
Finished. That was one hell of a word. How do you tie up a knot like this one? I knew where this was all going to end but I don't know how in hell we ever figured it was going to be anywhere close to be being finished.
"Do we have to do this?" I asked Irvin.
"What kind of a question is that?" Irvin asked back. "The bastard burned a couple of your buddies to death and killed my big brother. He sent them up in flames like last year's gas bill. What the hell else can we do?"
"You're sure about that are you?" Tyree asked. "You figure I did all that you think I did?"
We all jumped like flung-bungeed cats. These were the first words Tyree had said all night, since we'd jumped him outside of the Legion Hall and tied him up and gagged him. He hadn't even said anything after he'd chewed the duct tape gag loose. Maybe he figured on saving his breath for his death song.
Personally, I didn't understand this kind of thinking. If I was walking my last mile and knew it, I don't believe I'd shut up for a minute. I'd talk a steel blue streak, trying to make up for everything I wasn't going to be able to say later. There are a whole lot of things I haven't had a chance to say yet.
Then there were all of those things I missed the chance to say. Things that I wished I had the chance to say, even now. I wished I could go back and tell Beth Skinner how hot she had looked in her cinnamon and lemonade striped cheerleading outfit, back before Marie and I said "I do" to each other. I wished I had told my high school track instructor what a colossal aneurism he'd been for taking me off of the track team just as I was getting fast enough to break the school record in the 100 yard dash just because I'd gone and chucked our champion javelin chucker straight through three lockers full of soccer balls, for having the nerve to look sideways at my girlfriend's ass. I wished I'd had the chance to tell the javelin chucker how sorry I was that there hadn't been a fourth locker.
And more than anything I wished that I'd found the time to tell my dad how much I looked up to him, back before I found myself staring down at him laying there in that long dark box.
If I closed my eyes now I knew I would see him staring up at me out of the darkness, his face as cold and hard as that last chunk of frozen purple meat at the bottom of the deep freeze. I knew he would open his mouth and he would say something to me in the voice of the bear that I just didn't think I wanted to hear right now.
So I
kept my eyes open and promised myself I wouldn't blink.
"I think we ought to let him talk," I said.
"Who, Donny?"
"No, Tyree."
"What for?" Irvin asked. "Just a waste of good air, if you ask me. Haven't you heard there's an ozone crisis going on? Keep yakking like you are, using up all of that good atmosphere, and we're all going to need to wipe our assholes with SPF 75 sunscreen."
"Donny's bean-farts do just as much damage to the ozone layer," I pointed out. "Besides, I think Tyree deserves a say in this."
"He's had his say. He said it when the first flames went up. He said it when my brother's face started to split open from the heat, all sizzling like bear meat grilling down on the barbecue."
"I think Hanny is right," Donny said. "We all ought to have a say."
"Sure you all ought to," Irvin said. He whirled back around, back-handing Donny so hard that one of his teeth spit out. "What do you have to say to that, fuckhead?"
Donny hit the ground. His mouth was bleeding.
"I think he chipped my toof," Donny said.
He tried to grin, but it was all lopsided and wrong. That Donny smile didn't quite look the same. Something had been twisted in it and I didn't think it could ever be fixed.
I looked at Irvin, hard as I could.
"You didn't have to do that Irvin," I said.
"Didn't not have to do it either," Irvin said right back at me. "Now shut the fuck up. We're here."
Sure enough we were, right at Five mile switch, out amongst the tall jack pines. You could see the signs of the old bushfire if you knew what to look for. It had taken out the woods for miles. Everybody figured it for a heat lightning strike. Donny and I had been out here blueberry picking. We caught shit for wandering so damn far off the track.
Now there was nothing but jack pines and more blueberries. The pines always came back after the fire rolled through. There was something in the heat that popped their seeds from the pine cones. The blueberries grew thicker than usual here as well. I guess ashes were great for fertilizer.
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